Have you heard the news?

The Florida state government is doing that funny thing again where they try to "clean up" the voter rolls so that convicted felons can't vote. Except the "process" is so confusing and difficult that it might lead to one of those big "screw-ups" like we dealt with in November 2000. You remember the hanging chads? Oh God! What a big mess! But at least maybe we'll get another national "civics lesson" out of it. Just like the "Iraqi people" have gotten an interesting "military strategy" lesson out of the big mess in Iraq! What a mess!

Anyway, in case you haven't heard the news, you should know that the new Florida felon-purge list is all screwed up! Ha, ha! It seems that of the 48,000 felons in the state of Florida, there are 61 Hispanics. I guess all those Cubans don't commit crimes. Maybe it's because they spend their time sucking on crucifixes and praying to Jeb. And many of the "felons" on the felon list who are of the same race as Clarence Thomas aren't actually felons.

Well, the non-partisan U.S. Civil Rights Commission has declared that the list is evidence of, at best, gross incompetence. They can't say outright that Jeb Bush is guilty of fraud and violations of the Civil Rights Act, because making those criminal charges would probably make more problems for the commissioners than they can afford to deal with. But the list has been thrown out.

Oh, wait. It hasn't. Jeb has said that now it is up to the counties to keep felons from voting--and they will have to figure out a way to do so on their own. Republican officials in several counties have already declared that they are going to use the very list that the U.S. Civil Rights Commission has declared to be inaccurate, racist, and written in the spirit of Abu Ghraib.

So, let's be clear here: there will be massive voter fraud perpetrated against blacks in Florida this fall. The intention to commit fraud has been announced publicly, and yet no federal authorities have stepped in to stop it, and no media outlet has played the announcement as a lead or front-page story. The fraud will probably cost John Kerry Florida. Similar kinds of fraud--including making inaccurate voter purge lists, closing polling stations, sabotaging get-out-the-vote-efforts (a crime that a Republican operative has admitted, in court, to performing in 2002), etc.--will occur in other states, likely costing John Kerry the national election.

Justice will only be served when Jeb and George, celebrating their "victory," are surprised by the sudden descent of the angry Jesus whose name they desecrate on a daily basis. Let us pray that Jesus viciously impales the brothers on either end of a white-hot anal spike (thus joining them forever in a new kind of holy matrimony).

UPDATE: At 4 p.m., on Judy Woodruff's CNN program "Kill Americans and Rape Their Corpses" there was a long segment on the "controversy" concerning elections in Florida. A clip of Florida Rep. Corrine Brown calling the 2000 election a "coup d'etat" was played repeatedly. Other Democrats (John Kerry, Jesse Jackson) were shown talking about how blacks were disenfranchised in 2000 and how it was important to prevent this from happening again. Much was made of a House resolution defeated today that would have called for UN monitoring of the 2004 election in Florida. Republicans were shown talking about how this would waste UN resources since other non-functional democracies were in need of supervision. At no point in the report was a felon purge list mentioned. The inaccurate purge list of 2000 was not mentioned. Not a word was uttered concerning the recent discovery that Jeb Bush's 2004 purge list has been exposed by the US Civil Rights Commission as naming 48,000 blacks and 61 Hispanics. The segment thus succeeded in making it seem like the "controversy" was about nothing at all--claims and counter-claims, all made to seem as if they referred to no particular events or abuses.

Scats writes:

As all you AmCoppers well know, there is a new acronym on the scene: GWOT. It stands for the Global War On Terror. Although its use is still marginal, it is a favorite of chien, his hebephrenic band of brothers that make up the the Fighting Hellmice of the 101st Keyboarders and other denizens of jingoist discussion circles. I suppose we should be thankful that it has not replaced the more mainstream "War on Terror" as a description of what is currently going on in the world.

As many liberals have pointed out "War on Terror", being nonsense, is hardly satisfactory as a meaningful use of speech. Some have taken to calling it the "so-called War on Terror" which has the virtue of pointing out that the "War on Terror" is a name that doesn't fit the thing it names. Nevertheless, "so-called" doesn't trip off the tongue very easily and simply adding a qualification to "War on Terror" implicitly accepts the unacceptable linguistic frame already on offer.

So, a few sympathetic souls over at Hullabaloo and I have hashed out an alternative which I think could work. I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, a much more accurate, easily understood and easily pronounced phrase:

T.W.A.T. -- Thousand-year War At Terror

The Thousand-year obviously echoes the original Fuhrer's description of his grand "vision" (something which Bush is said to have in spades). Whereas Hitler rhapsodized in historicalities and used "Thousand-year" to signify an epochal state of affairs, some of us are apparently more comfortable with spatial hyperbole and have come up with "Global". Things in our world aren't really grand unless they're Global, World-wide or International. Notice how our domestic nutcases fall well outside the rubric of the "War on Terror". Not crossing an international boundary to kill innocents is so Oklahoma City, so policework, so not a War.

At any rate, looking back on Hitler's use of "Thousand-year" it seems quaint when compared to our refinement in the use of "The End of History". Was that as far into the future as you could think, Adolf? You may have conquered Europe, but we ended the Future itself, you piker! Perhaps that's why there is no time or space qualification in the phrase "War on Terror", it is meant to be a state of relations, not an event. Since the current "war" has no end in policy, fact, thought or intent, "Thousand-year" is at least satirically accurate. Unfortunately "thousand-year" falls just a hair short of descriptive accuracy since our current "war" has no conceived end in time either. Terror, like the poor, will always be with us.

The ungrammatical "At" will no doubt raise objections. But "At" in this instance has a couple things going for it. Firstly, it echoes the troglodyte pseudo-"regular-guy" pidgin of our Dear Leader and his followers. Thus it reeks of authenticity, which has become the principal evaluative question of contemporary political suasion. Are the policies good or bad? Who cares? Could you have a beer with the people implementing the policies? At last, a question worth pondering. "At" taps into the zeitgeist and signals credibility.

Secondly, it signifies again more accurately what is going on. This "War" isn't being fought on terrorists, its being fought mostly with rhetoric in the direction of terrorism. Given what's happened in the last three years, we can only be said to be making war in the impressionistic or suggestive sense that we are making warlike gestures toward the abstraction of "Terror", but rarely, or at least not principally, actually taking common-sense steps to reduce "Terror". "Terror", equally a misnomer, having come to mean the activity or phenomenon of terrorist attacks. We haven't gotten "on" the problem in any substantive way, but we certainly talk "at" and "around" it quite a bit.

And to counter objections of sexist phraseology from the left, I would say that the play on "twat" is meant in the British slang sense of calling someone a fool or idiot. Not in the sense of calling someone a "cunt", which has more of an "asshole" or "bitch" connotation to it in American slang. Although it is still perjorative in the British sense, we can use it without a double standard if we remember that "tool", a slang word for the male penis, and also a useful fool or idiot, is in common use. Compare to "cock", "prick" or "dick" which have more of the "cunt/bitch" connotation. In English we use slang words for genitalia to indicate things that rub us the wrong way; it has nothing to do with the patriarchy.

Thus, TWAT.

To see how this would work out in practice one could type "war on terror" or "global war on terror" into the Google news search engine and then substitute the results with TWAT. Thus we get:

from the Boston Globe: Bush says that, "We are waging a broad and unrelenting TWAT, and an active campaign against proliferation."

from a Yahoo News press release: According to Robert David Steele Vivas, CEO of OSS.Net, Inc., a global commercial intelligence corporation, "TWAT is unwinnable as the U.S. Government is now trained, equipped, and organized."

headline from WATE in Tennessee: Officials appreciate Oak Ridge connection to TWAT

and from the Scotsman: The top soldier in the United States Army today likened the TWAT to fighting cancer and said that although it may go “in remission” it will not disappear.

and my personal favorite, from American Forces Information Services: What American soldiers are doing in the TWAT is every bit as important as what their grandparents did in World War II, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said.

Slim-Fast sheds Whoopi Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comedian Whoopi Goldberg will no longer appear in ads for diet aid maker Slim-Fast following her lewd riff on President George W. Bush's name at a fund-raiser last week, the company SAYS.

Florida-based Slim-Fast said it was "disappointed" in Goldberg's remarks at last Thursday's $7.5 million (4 million pounds) star-studded fund-raiser at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

"Ads featuring Ms. Goldberg will no longer be on the air," Slim-Fast General Manager Terry Olson said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that the company regrets that Goldberg's remarks offended some customers.

Republicans have expressed outrage over the fund-raiser for presumptive Democratic nominee John F. Kerry and his vice presidential running mate, John Edwards, in which entertainers lined up to skewer the president.

The New York Post said of Goldberg's appearance at the event: "Waving a bottle of wine, she fired off a stream of vulgar sexual wordplays on Bush's name in a riff about female genitalia."

A spokesperson for Goldberg declined immediate comment.

Slim-Fast is a unit of Anglo-Dutch food-to-detergent group Unilever.

The following is a transcription made by Salon.com of a segment of Hersh’s recent ACLU speech.

As Salon’s Geraldine Sealey observes, “You can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say.”

Hersh:

"Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

"It's impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we're dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there's enough out there, they can't (Applause). .... So it's going to be an interesting election year."

Just in case any of you have forgotten, our government has taken it upon itself to murder civilians, to torture them, to rape them with chemical lamps, and--now we learn--to sodomize small children. And the government has done all of this in your name. That is, the government has said, implicitly and explicitly, that you, you personally, want and need it to rape and murder innocent civilians, among them small children. Just follow this link to read a precis of Seymour Hersh's speech last week to the ACLU (here there is another link to a video of the speech). Among other things, Hersh refers to the horror of hearing, in still-unreleased videotapes, the cries of young boys being raped. He also notes, in case you were wondering, that the famed terrorist Zarqaqi is actually a "composite figure," and that we have no idea who is leading the resistance.



(This image was created by the great sculptor Richard Serra. Visit this site to see his image of Bush eating the head of a child; the image pays homage to a great painting of Kronos by the Spanish artist, war-hater, and terrorism-advocate, Goya.)

There’s been a lot of misinformation about last Thursday night’s gala concert and fundraiser for Kerry-Edwards at Radio City Music Hall in NYC. There have been members of Congress shouting from the floor that the Kerry campaign ought to provide a videotape of the concert to “come clean” about the events that took place. The Bush campaign is sending “open letters” demanding that Kerry “release the performance.” And there’s a general impression even among Kerry-Edwards supporters that, indeed, the evening was a three-hour, libertine raunchfest, MCed by a sex-pun-frenzied Whoopi Goldberg.

That’s all wrong. I was there, for real. Here’s what actually happened (to the best of my sex-pun-frenzied memory):

The capacity crowd fills the Music Hall by about 7:30pm.

At about 7:45pm, Kerry and Edwards appear on the stage, the crowd goes wild, and the candidates step off into the orchestra seating area to shake hands and embrace their supporters. They take their seats (Kerry next to his wife on one side and Rolling Stone editor and the show’s co-producer Jann Wenner on the other), while the crowd remains in an optimistic, patriotic tizzy.

A spotlight opens on a balcony above stage right where Jon Bon Jovi stands with acoustic guitar. He plays an acoustic version of “Livin’ on a Prayer” followed by a low-key “It’s My Life.” He then takes the stage, and -- accompanied by keyboard and violin -- plays an inspiring cover of the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.”

Bon Jovi introduces Paul Newman, who decries the inequity of the Bush tax cuts and declares that “tax cuts to wealthy thugs like me are borderline criminal.”

(No "X-rated rant[s] full of sexual innuendoes" thus far.)

Around this time, Wyclef Jean comes out and plays a whimsical song called “If I Were President,” and soon after is joined by Mary J. Blige. The crowd goes berserk for Blige, who, with Jean’s band, sings a moody ballad that touches on the dire state of the country and summons the outrage New Yorkers felt on 9/11 and the outrage that persists to this day.

Jessica Lange comes out and discusses the need for a candidate who can restore America’s conscience.

The next musical act is John Mellencamp, who, even non-Mellencampers had to admit, rocked pretty hard. He kicked off with “Small Town,” his tribute to down-home American values (and erstwhile theme song of John Edwards’ primary campaign).

Mellencamp then stripped down to acoustic to play the shambling, impromptu-sounding “Texas Bandito,” (or, as reported by the New York Post, "Texas Bambino"). The song was a thinly-couched denunciation of a certain “cheap thug” and phony cowboy who gets his way by bullying others around and is generally ruining the country.

Mellencamp was then joined by Bon Jovi for a stomping version of “Pink Houses” (a.k.a. “Ain’t That America”), an electric celebration of the ups and downs of pursuing the American “dream.”

(Jokes aside, Mellencamp seems pretty cool. His music is better than you remember, and his left-of-center political ethic seems genuine. Read this fascinating interview, and maybe even buy one of his CDs.)



Chevy Chase did a monologue about Bush being dumb, and somewhere in here Whoopi Goldberg came out for her now-notorious "Dirty Diss at Dubya."

She talked for about 10 minutes, lucidly, convincingly, about the problems facing the country and the problems with our current leadership. She veered off for about 30 seconds into a not particularly funny, nor particularly vulgar riff on the multiple meanings of the word Bush (“Everyone loves Bush… I don’t mean THAT Bush!” etc.) And she concluded with inspiring words for Kerry and Edwards to take on the campaign trail.

Not long after, Meryl Streep delivered a brilliant, simple -- albeit sheepish -- denunciation of the cynical appeals to religion made by certain national politicians. She read through several of Christ's teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, pointed out the ways in which George W. Bush has failed to honor those lessons, then asked a series of rhetorical questions about Bush’s further disparagement of the Christ-ian legacy: “Would Jesus attack another country pre-emptively? Would he approve the dropping of bombs on innocent civilians…?”

The point was well made, but Streep’s speech went over in the concert hall like a lead balloon: scant applause, nervous murmuring. This was certainly -- in this eyewitness’ estimation -- not a result of the frailty of her arguments but perhaps more a function of the frailty of the collective stomach of even an open-minded, enthusiastic liberal crowd when it comes to discussion of religion.

Between several of the speeches, the Dave Matthews Band came out and gave a crowd-pleasing rundown of some of their hits (“Too Much,” “Ants Marching,” etc.). Matthews himself spoke for a while, not on anything in particular, kind of a strange mumbling jag, but his music was well-received and accompanied by much dancing and merriment.

The comic John Leguizamo, in cornrows, riffed humorously for a while about identity politics ("Latins for Republicans? That’s like roaches for Raid") before Mellencamp came out to introduce the (sort of) surprise headlining act: the former Creedence Clearwater Revival rocker John Fogerty.

After a mellow rendition of his new anti-Iraq War anthem “Déjà Vu (All Over Again),” anticipation built for one Fogerty’s great, politically-slashing songs from the 1960s.

Thankfully, he obliged by playing “Fortunate Son,” but devastatingly, a guitar malfunction prevented him from being able to tear out the song’s clarion guitar riff. He sang through it, gamely, spitting out the ever-salient lyrics, with a slight update (“It ain’t me!… It ain’t me!… I ain’t no President’s son… naw, naw, naw…”)

After the Fogerty set, the Kerrys and the Edwards took to the stage. John Edwards gave a gleaming introduction of the future President, and John Kerry returned the favor by praising his running mate, and saluting all of the night’s performers and monologists.

Apparently, his claim that the performers "conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country" (which they did) has become very controversial. The Bush campaign has shat out more than one email denouncing that sentiment (and also calling the concert a “hate fest”). But Kerry said it, he meant it, and from my vantage point, what he said was precisely true.

Teresa Heinz Kerry spoke for a bit, as did Elizabeth Edwards, then the whole troupe of Kerrys, Edwards, singers and players came on stage for a rousing group sing-along of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” complete with John Edwards dueting with Mellencamp, and John Kerry strumming rhythm guitar in the background.

All told, the event affirmed the greatest and truest of American values (community, patriotism, integrity, diversity, family, faith, and freedom of expression) netted $7.5 million for the campaign (a record for any event, Democrat or Republican), and demonstrated the irresistible power of the Kerry-Edwards ticket -- which are certainly the reasons the Republicans are getting so upset about it.

If you need any more reason why should contribute to Richard Morrison (the guy who's running against Tom DeLay), read the latest from Krugman, who gives a nice summation of DeLay's decade-long successful efforts to eliminate checks and balances in the Texas and U.S. governments, guarantee a constant flow of corporate money to candidates who do his (and his corporate sugar daddies') bidding, and irrevocably entrench Republican power--all at the behest of the Kingdom of God! Krugman explains why it's basically a fluke that DeLay is even being investigated. As for our hopes for a good outcome from the investigation, Krugman notes, "Four of the five Republicans on the House ethics committee, where a complaint has been filed against Mr. DeLay, are past recipients of Armpac [DeLay's political action committee] money."

While staying at my parents' house this week, I've been relishing the sight of all the Kerry bumper stickers around the neighborhood and around town. In addition to making me happy, I'm guessing they really do make a difference--for morale, for visibility, for the general consciousness of the candidate.

So I was meaning to order my free Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker.

I had also been meaning to make my monthly donation to the Kerry campaign.

But at the website, I found that for a $25 contribution, you can receive a package of 10 Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers to give to your family and friends. So I killed two birds with one stone. You can too.

It’s a good thing all that reckless speculation by Condoleezza Rice and David Brooks -- about how, like in Spain, the terrorists want the left-leaning party to win the election in our country -- has not fallen on deaf years.

Now, you can buy T-shirts and bumper stickers from something called AuthenticGOP.com with this logo on the front:

And this slogan on the back:


Cool, huh?

I can’t see how, using the GOP logo and all, this enterprise is not affiliated with the GOP, but I wrote AuthenticGOP.com and the “real” (?) GOP to find out for sure. At presstime, neither has responded.

Let’s assume, then, that these shirts are fully licensed and approved by the Republican National Committee.

Nice work, boys!


10 out of 10 pederasts support Bush.

I'm posting from Maryland this week, and the front page of today's Washington Post reads like an actual parody of Bush-era "news":

Roadless Rules for Forests Set Aside
USDA Plans to Reverse Clinton Prohibitions

The Bush administration said yesterday it plans to overturn a Clinton-era rule that made nearly 60 million acres of national forest off-limits to road-building and logging, setting aside one of the most sweeping land preservation measures in decades.

'We Were Right to Go Into Iraq,' Bush Says
President Seeks to Offset Senate Panel's Findings

I particularly love this kind of headline. He "seeks" to "offset" the panel's findings? This is diction at its most tortured. "Offset"? Do they mean "Deny"? As in, "President Seeks to Deny Panel's Findings by Continuing to Lie, Whine and Bluster?"

GE Lobbyists Mold Tax Bill

Oh, OK! Awesome!

Well, that's today's news. Do people really want four more years of front pages like this?

If you have money lying around, send it to Richard Morrison, the Democrat running to unseat Tom DeLay in Texas's 22nd district. He might actually have a shot.

Should DeLay lose, the world would instantly become a better place.

And in case you’ve forgotten how crooked DeLay is, The Washington Post today details his illegal funneling of corporate contributions to help Republicans win seats in the Texas legislature -– in order to illegally redistrict the state to pry seats from members of Texas' Democratic Congressional delegation.


Asshole.

A comment-poster at Eschaton writes:

I'm watching a Bush stump speech on C-Span. Bush made a rhetorical attack on lawsuits and how they're the reason that we don't have good insurance coverage when the camera panned to two people wearing white lab coats (looking very much like doctors/clinicians) giving a standing ovation.

Now, stop me if I'm making no sense, but I don't think that anyone - ANYONE - would wear a lab coat to a political rally. Could it be propwear?????? Any doctors out there that wear their lab coats as social attire?

Pretty darn hilarious.

The Bushies are pushing Pakistan to roll out bin Laden, Al Zawahiri, Mullah Omar or other high-value targets (HVTs) in time to give Bush his election war-bump.

Specifically, an official with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency tells The New Republic that a White House aide told the ISI’s director that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July" -- in other words, the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

The only thing I don’t get is calling this a “surprise.” Would anyone really be “surprised” if the Boston convention were ripped from the headlines by a big terrism story?

It’s not too early to prepare for United for Peace & Justice’s August 29 protest of the Republican convention.

Out of towners: make your travel arrangements. New Yorkers: host your friends.

Tune to www.unitedforpeace.org for updates on the when’s and where’s.

Meanwhile, Republican convention sources assure AmCop that folks from all walks of life and political persuasions are encouraged to drop by any of the parties being staged to fete the conventioneers.

The details.

I've been reading Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven (actually listening to the audiobook in my car). Krakauer's books are entertaining as hell and make outstanding car listening. This one's about Mormon (aka Latter Day Saint) fundamentalism, 1830-present.

I was interested to hear Krakauer's take on September 11. He describes a day on which a group of terrorists--religious fundamentalists, acting out of fierce allegiance to a rigidly theocratic world-view, and anger and fear toward a United States government they considered evil and non-believing and a primary cause of their people's suffering--a day on which this group of terrorists killed innocent men, women and children indiscriminately, savagely attacking peaceful travelers who were only trying to get from one end of the country to the other without harm.

Of course, this was September 11, 1857, the day of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, when a wagon train known as the Fancher Party (en route from Arkansas to California) was ambushed by a posse of Mormon militiamen and their Indian mercenaries.

Krakauer writes (I'm transcribing from audio, so excuse any errors):

The youngest children and several of the wounded were placed in a wagon and driven away. They were followed on foot by the emigrant women and older children. A few hundred yards behind this group the men of the Fancher Party were led away in single file, with each emigrant escorted closely by a Mormon guard. After approximately thirty minutes Major Higby, bringing up the rear on horseback, discharged a firearm to get the Saints' attention. "Halt!" he ordered, according to a prearranged plan. "Do your duty." At this infamous command, each of the Mormons immediately fired a bullet point blank into the head of the captive under his purview. Most of the emigrant men died instantly, but one of the Saints recalled seeing an apostate Mormon (one of the backouts who had joined the Fancher train in Utah and was a close acquaintance of the Mormon executioners) lying wounded on the ground, pleading to Higby for his life. According to a Mormon witness Higby told the apostate, "You would have done the same to me, or just as bad," and then slit the apostate's throat.

Another Saint who participated in the massacre later reported that while the men from the Fancher Party were being executed by their Mormon escorts, the women and children were attacked by the Indians, among whom were Mormons in disguise. Painted Saints and Puyutes rushed upon these victims with guns and knives and began shooting and bludgeoning them to death, and slashing their throats. An Arkansan named Nancy Huff, who was four years old at the time, later reported, "I saw my mother shot in the forehead and fall dead. The women and children screamed and clung together. Some of the young women begged the assassins after they had run out on us not to kill them, but they had no mercy on them, clubbing their guns and beating out their brains." According to Nephi Johnson, a Mormon who later confessed his own culpability to historian Juanita Brooks, white men did most of the killing.

The slaughter was over in a matter of minutes, leaving an estimated 120 emigrants dead. Approximately fifty of the victims were men, twenty were women, and fifty were children or adolescents. Out of the entire Fancher wagon train only seventeen lives were spared, all of them children no more than five years old, deemed too young to remember enough to bear witness against the Saints. Those children not killed were taken to Mormon homes to be raised as Latter Day Saints. Some were placed in the households of the very men who had murdered their parents and siblings. In 1859 an agent of the federal government managed to find all seventeen survivors and return them to their Arkansas kin. But before handing the kids over, their Mormon keepers had the audacity to demand thousands of dollars in payment for feeding and schooling the youngsters while they were in the Saints' care.

When quiet settled over the killing field, the Mormons looted the corpses for valuables. After the Saints had gathered what they wanted they allowed the Indians to take the rest. The dead emigrants were soon stripped of everything including every shred of clothing they'd been wearing...

The Mormon militiamen reportedly piled the dead bodies up in heaps in little gullies and threw dirt over them. The bodies were only lightly covered for the ground was hard and the brethren did not have sufficient tools to dig with. Within days wolves and other scavengers had unearthed the dead emigrants from the shallow graves and scattered their remains across the meadow. Upon completion of this half-hearted, hastily-undertaken burial, according to Lee, the Saints gathered in a circle at the site of the mass murder to offer thanks to God "for delivering our enemies into our hands." Then the overseers of the massacre reiterated the necessity of always saying the Indians did it alone, and that the Mormons had nothing to do with it. It was voted unanimously that any man who should divulge the secret, or tell who was present, or do anything that would lead to a discovery of the truth, should suffer death.

You've got to hand it to those Saints--at least they preserved democracy to the last!

You start digging into a little good old fashioned American history, and Lars von Trier's "Dogville" starts to seem like "Leave It to Beaver."

(One irony of the above story is the Mormons' use of the Puyute Indians for these acts of savagery. Mormons believed American Indians were descendants of North America's prehistoric dark-skinned Bad Tribe, who (according to the Book of Mormon, which transliterates Biblical-type mythology onto our continent) waged battle with the prehistoric white-skinned Good Tribe. (The savage, bloodthirsty Darkies triumphed, but the Whities came back with a mission to convert the Darkies and so turn them "White.") African-Americans weren't allowed into the Church until 1978. To this day, fringy LDS fundamentalists consider black people to be the most intelligent type of animals.)


No, Orrin, it's fairly clear that your God is bloodshed and hate. Your own sacred texts explain as much in very clear terms. And your prophets are lying, philandering, avaricious, wifebeating, murderous bloodthirsty hypocrites.


I wouldn't wipe my ass with Brigham Young. Or you, Orrin. You bad, bad, naughty little boy, you.